Warp and Weft
by D. M. Domini
Summary: A prequel to "Weyrbred Lads".


**Warp and Weft**

(A prequel to Weyrbred Lads)

_By D. M. Domini, _based on Anne McCaffrey's _Dragonriders of Pern_ series.

#

Nariath didn't die _between_. He died on ichor-soaked ground, a great, gaping hole eaten in his belly by thread. The stench of acids and firestone and a scent that D'red had only smelled in weyrling barracks before-the shit of dragons-was heavy in the sub-tropical air of Ista Weyr.

Sounds escaped D'red's throat-no, Woadred's throat. He remembered teasing Nariath about being fat for a blue this morning as they waited for the Weyr to spring skyward, and go _between _to meet thread in battle once more. Now he saw pale fat bulging from one end of the wound. He hadn't _meant_ it. Nariath was _his_ even if he was fat. Nariath was a fat, sonorous-voiced blue with a penchant for throwing his weight around in non-rider matters, for even a blue was large beast outside of the Weyr, and Nariath was all _his_...yet now he was gone.

But his stinking, broken body still lingered on the soil.

Why hadn't Naraith gone _between_ with him? "WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME HERE!" he screamed at the flesh that lay there, at the gaping, burning hole in his mind and thoughts. "WE SHOULD HAVE STAYED _BETWEEN_!"

Nariath did not reply, did not chide for double-guessing him.

Someone tried to turn him away-a wingleader, perhaps, or wingsecond. There was a flash of brown-colored rank knots at his shoulder. Woadred punched him, but it was easy for the dragonrider to duck a punch thrown by a threadfall-tired, grieving ex-rider.

#

Woadred went to sleep, searching for Nariath. He dreamt of Nariath, and then he awoke listening for the slow in-and-out of his dragon sleeping on the stone weyr. Not finding that, he sat awake, hoping Nariath would return, then cried himself to sleep when a full day had passed and this had not happened.

It went on like that for a long time.

He wanted to die. Once he found himself chopping vegetables, and also chopping his hand. They took the vegetables away and a Healer stitched him up and asked him if he wanted to go _between._

But Nariath hadn't gone _between._ Not on his own power. He'd died, leaking vital fluids along with fire and shit he hadn't had a chance to expel, on the ground. So Nariath would not be _between. _If some part of Nariath was left anywhere, it was here.

It was too exhausting to explain this, though, so he sat and stared at the wall. Then he cried. They didn't take him _between_.

Dragonmen are different. They didn't tell the boys that when they were brought onto the hatching ground. Perhaps they tried, eerie smiles appearing on their faces as they and their dragon tried to work out how to use clumsy, awkward words to convey the truth, but the words they found couldn't make a non-rider _know_. And they didn't talk about the months of adjustment where a newly-hatched mind was tight up against yours, _in_ yours, and you were just a boy on the verge of manhood, and you had to protect this young dragon, you had this huge responsibility to teach him, and watch as he learned from you and blossomed into his own being, even as he stayed rooted tightly in your mind. You were friend, and elder brother and father and uncle to your dragon all in one. And then the dragon grew, very fast and very large, and then _he_ protected _you_ from threadfall, whisking you both _between_. He became a refuge you could curl up on, a steady source of love and affirmation. The strong brother at your back. Even if you'd had real brothers, and knew what asses they were, your dragon was the _perfect_ brother you never thought you'd have, the brother from a Harper's tale, a brother that would live and die for you like human brothers would not.

Now, he was alone again, and it was terrible. He didn't remember it being so terrible the first time around, prior to Impression, but it was. Did all of the world outside the Weyr walk around in this utter desolation, utter head-silence? Or was it the ignorance of bliss?

Or was that the bliss of ignorance?

He'd grown from boy to man with his dragon. Now he was a man, without the dragon. Did that make him a boy again?

He couldn't make himself ask the questions that drifted through his grief like clouds at midnight. It was too hard. When words left his mouth, people looked at him with pity. Nariath would have answered him without needing words, and the loss made him weep once again, lips pulled back, teeth bared in a rictus of grief.

#

Once, he found himself on a bench within the cool corridors of Ista Weyr. There were many such benches, as people liked to retreat inside-but not too far inside-at the height of the heated days, without having to trek all the way in to their quarters. A young woman found him during her duties, paused and looked into his eyes, or tried, and pushed a savory cake into his hand that she'd probably been saving for herself, then picked up her basket and went on her way.

A little time later, a group of young riders, not a full Turn Impressed came in out of the heat. They made as if to settle on the benches next to his, but one spotted Woadred and suggested as if by chance that they settle around the bend. So as not to bother "him". The others agreed with quiet little nods, and left.

Shortly after that, the Weyr's Harper trudged in, and sat down with a puff across the corridor from Woadred. He grimaced, looked at Woadred as if he were going to say something but thought better of it, and brought his gitar around onto his lap to make sure it'd taken no trouble from the heat. He tuned a few off-strings, silently fingered a few cords, then glanced at Woadred again and went _twoi-iinng?_

No words. Just the sound a string made when you set your fingers on it for the note, plucked it, then slid your fingers into a new configuration to shorten the length of the string while the string still thrummed. _Twoi-iinng?_

Like a query from Nariath. No words, just a question mark, alone and solitary.

Except Nariath would be much deeper in tone.

He wanted to ask if the Harper knew how the wordless sound was just like a silent question, but he was afraid he would, and afraid he would not. He began to cry.

The Weyr's Harper made his gitar sound mournful.

Woadred threw the savory cake he'd never eaten at the man.

The harper fumbled, but caught it, surprised. "Is the receipt of the cake a cheer, or a booing of my abilities?" he asked, his tenor voice pleasant to listen to. "You can never tell, when they throw food at you..."

Woadred got up and left.

#

Sometimes, they set him in front of a loom. He'd pass the whatever-it-was from side to side, and stomped on the-thing-down-below, and some terrible cloth would eventually be produced. He averaged three to five new lines of thread in two hours. Between that, he just stared at weft and warp. Sometimes he stared at warp and weft. And sometimes he stared at the warp and wept.

Once, he found a bit of thread tied tightly around two legs of the loom. There seemed no practical purpose to it; it seemed like some weaver's child might have sat on the floor playing with string while their parent worked. Woadred plucked it, and it made a surprisingly clear sound for a piece of string. He asked it why it was there, by trying to press a finger near one end to shorten it while plucking the other half, but it didn't make the perfect _twoi-iing?_ sound of a gitar. Rather, it was more like a flabby _twub. Thwub. Tub._ It didn't care that it was there, it just was.

He got up, and went looking for a better string with more curiosity than the one wound around the loom.

He found one, or rather ten, a few hallways away. It was a gitar, but a fancy one that had eight main strings, and two that would vibrate freely and produce harmonics. Those were attached to two special tuners that stuck out like ears at the end of the gitar's neck. Woadred gently picked it up, and executed the perfect _twoi-iinng_? Not on a high string, like before, but a lovely low one. _Twoi-iing?_ The sound of a dragon's query in the back of your head.

Woadred had been a Harper once. Not for very long, only two turns as an Apprentice before he'd been Searched. Both Crafts and the Weyr took people at a young age.

_Twoi-iing?_ he made the gitar ask, on a basso string. Like Nariath at his back. And he replicated the indifferent, incurious _twub, thwub_ from the loom with a different string that had apparently just been threaded through, but not tightened and tuned yet.

The owner of the gitar, the Weyr harper, Isenhard, eventually found him with it. Or maybe Woadred just eventually realized he was there. Woadred stopped asking the gitar questions, and raised it carefully up in his hands, like someone offering a child back to its parent. Isenhard shook his head and puttered around Woadred to pick up a less fancy gitar. Then he sat back down, and began a tune Woadred was familiar with; Menolly's Running Song.

Partway through the song, but before the conclusion was reached, Woadred remembered that a dragonrider had swept out if _between_ and rescued her.

It's something he and Nariath would have done.

He felt pain in his throat, and a headache starting to form behind his temples and eyes, but listened as the song processed. What was it like to be a non-rider rescued by a dragon pair?

He found the notes to be more informative than the words. The notes were...they were things he remembered, the way he would do it if he only knew how. But how could a non-rider remind him of things like this? Of things that stumbled and floundered in communication when he tried words?

"I don't understand," he said, and his voice was soft, and rough. He didn't use it voluntarily often. And he used it involuntarily often, but that sort of use didn't seem to lend itself to easy dictation.

Isenhard looked at him, pausing the song. "She was caught out during threadfall but was rescued."

Words. They never actually communicated correctly. So Woadred bent his head over the gitar in his lap and began to see if the _twoi-iings_ and _thwubs_ which had truer meanings to his ear could be crafted into something that communicated the things he thought about better. Perhaps music could more accurately tell people what it was like to be a dragonrider, and what it was like to no longer be one.


End file.
